This weekend I made a trip to Minneapolis...a last little hurrah before my job starts tomorrow (eek!).
Wow. Do I ever love that place. Seriously. I can't peg it exactly - is it all of the people there that mean so much to me? Or the sweet nostalgia of a really wonderful college experience? Or just that good old fashioned Minnesota nice that you find everywhere you go? Whatever it is, that place takes the cake. This visit I missed it especially, perhaps because of the smell of September in the air, the changing leaves and the campus crawling with bright-eyed freshman. Needless to say, I grinned my ears off the whole time. It was great.
I made the trip for a friend's wedding on Saturday, but earlier in the day BR and I went down to campus because I wanted to see the 35W bridge. Words can't even begin. Recently the 10th Ave. walking bridge was reopened, so we were able to walk parallel to the collapse site and get a good view (see the pics). My mind kept rolling around key thoughts:
The first, we are so incredibly, unbelievably small. In the scheme of these tragic disasters and accidents, our individual little lives and stories, while unique, are absolute specs of dust in light of the universe. How can we begin to wrap our infinitely complex but undeniably simple minds around the events that take place in this word? Nothing like massive piles of concrete and steel bent into "u" shapes to make you come to grips with your physical, and thus otherwise, itty bittiness.
And second, isn't it amazing that I walked past that bridge on a daily basis and rode a car across it weekly and never thought twice about it? As BR mentioned, we hardly even knew we were over a river when we used the bridge for our weekend runs to the grocery store. I kept looking down at the bike path along the river and thinking, I used to run past there all of the time, and I never even looked up to think about the cars whirring across overhead. Now the running path is covered with concrete rubble. I suppose I'd take the time to notice now if I were to go for a run.
Not to be so depressing, but seeing a disaster like that so "close to home" really puts it all in perspective. But yet, watching just a few minutes of the interested bridge visitors and workers down below made me even more proud to call myself a Minnesota Gopher. Good old hearty midwesterners, just plucking along and picking up the pieces. Literally.
As we walked away from the somber scene at the bridge, hundreds of sorority hopefuls skipped towards us on their way to bid day (I think that is what it is called)? It was a calming reminder that even a disaster on campus can't stop the annual kick-off events, most importantly Greek rush. Yeehaw!
3 comments:
I have to agree that the mass of the destruction is so great that you don't put it into perspective until you have seen it. I visited the Cities so often and long to see it again. Thanks for the pictures!
I always thought about the river when I daily drove across that bridge during my college years. But I'm someone who gets a little freaked out when the crush of rush hour traffic causes you to stop on any bridge, regardless of whether or not you can feel it shaking as the semi-trucks drive over (and that bridge was one where you could feel it shaking).
I couldn't have said it any better myself - everything about the cities and the bridge and...everything. I visited in late August and just looked at it, standing alone, in the rain, and cried. Cried for my city, for life and death, for ...everything. There is something about that city though...each time I'm driving back into it I get this excited feeling deep in my being. And when I leave, my body is sad.
Ok that's enough - love you!
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